Fatigue, Swinging the sword and Casting spells

[Climowitz]

Hello everyone, i want to add limit to the spells and sword swingin people can do all day and not get tired. What i need is to know, is there any official or third party, or even homebrew, rule set or system to manage this, so the amount of time a character can persist a fight is limited?

If there is something a bit explained, and not just Constitution score times 2 rounds limit, or just a sentence thing, that would be great.

[Nifft]

I guess the proper values for that would depend on what kind of fighting you want to happen in your world.

Cinematic?

Grim & gritty war documentary (including logistics & supply modifiers)?

Grimderp (war all day, double war for lunch)?

Glorious Crusaders?

Tucker's Fantasy Vietnam Horror Show (new & improved with 200% more tunnels)?

[St Fan]

I can propose you my own house rule, which I based around the rules for running. Considering the average length of an encounter, it won't necessarily come into play often, but it makes a prolonged fight much more realistic by taking stamina into account. I added a variable for armor, as in real life that would contribute to overheating.


The basic: any round of combat is as tiring as a round of running, whatever the activity (fighting, spellcasting...) during the round.

You can sustain a contiguous number of rounds of combat/running equal to your Constitution score minus your Armor Penalty.

Afterward, you have to make a Constitution check every round (DC 10+1/round), as with running. Endurance and similar traits give their usual bonus to the check.

Failure means you take only 1 action by round (as if Staggered).

You need at least 1 minute of full rest to remove the condition, or any magic that removes fatigue.

[Darrin]

Hello everyone, i want to add limit to the spells and sword swingin people can do all day and not get tired. What i need is to know, is there any official or third party, or even homebrew, rule set or system to manage this, so the amount of time a character can persist a fight is limited?

How would this *improve* the game? What exactly is your goal?

[Eldariel]

How would this *improve* the game? What exactly is your goal?

I think it's fairly obvious. Any kind of resource management makes the game tactically more varied and interesting. Any kind of grittiness adds to the verisimilitude of the game. This goes for all sorts of endurance, morale, etc. systems. They can also improve attribute balance and even class balance if implemented accordingly.

[Climowitz]

I can propose you my own house rule, which I based around the rules for running. Considering the average length of an encounter, it won't necessarily come into play often, but it makes a prolonged fight much more realistic by taking stamina into account. I added a variable for armor, as in real life that would contribute to overheating.


The basic: any round of combat is as tiring as a round of running, whatever the activity (fighting, spellcasting...) during the round.

You can sustain a contiguous number of rounds of combat/running equal to your Constitution score minus your Armor Penalty.

Afterward, you have to make a Constitution check every round (CD 10+1/round), as with running. Endurance and similar traits give their usual bonus to the check.

Failure means you take only 1 action by round (as if Staggered).

You need at least 1 minute of full rest to remove the condition, or any magic that removes fatigue.

Although a good system, i want to avoid dice as much as possible, so a fixed value would work better. It could be useful to notice that in this game, there is Constitution and Resistance as attributes. Constitution works as usual, however Resistances measures the ability to keep on making an effort, so running, holding breath, and those kind of activities are related to Resistance rather than Constitution.


How would this *improve* the game? What exactly is your goal?

I will be removing vancian magic, and i will use a system were casters draw power until they have enough to cast a spell, since there will be no daily limit, i need a way to show fatigue after a period of continuing casting, if not, i face the problem of casters casting a spell every minute all day.

This system nerfs casters a bit, while showing difference between low level spells and high level spells, since lower need fewer power to be casted, and have less recovery time. However we don't want an all day fireball siege on a city or things like that, so i need a parcial limit, based not on days, but rather on rest.

The idea is not to force a caster to sleep for 8 hours until being able to cast again, but rather to have the ability to use the utility spells outside of battle, and yet be usefull in combat.
The same goes to mundane fighters, since a combat followed by another and so on, should tire them.

[BowStreetRunner]

Pathfinder has a Stamina pool (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/stamina-and-combat-tricks-optional-rules/) from which they draw when performing Combat tricks. You might start there.

Keep in mind that the rules already encompass several mechanics that lead to some sort of tiring effect. Many of these are partially countered with the Endurance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#endurance) feat, including swimming, running, forced marches, etc.

[St Fan]

Although a good system, i want to avoid dice as much as possible, so a fixed value would work better. It could be useful to notice that in this game, there is Constitution and Resistance as attributes. Constitution works as usual, however Resistances measures the ability to keep on making an effort, so running, holding breath, and those kind of activities are related to Resistance rather than Constitution.


I can understand wanting to simplify thing by avoiding rolls, but note that an ensuing problem would be to remove any uncertainty to the stamina rules. If the players could know exactly when their characters will fall down, they can plan in advance around that. Having a roll make sure the players can't anticipate just when their character's stamina would fail them, which it should be, as it's not a measurable thing how long will and endurance would last exactly.

[flappeercraft]

I would so something like you get fatigued after (Con +3)x2 rounds of continuous combat where not taking an action for a turn such as from being stunned adds 2 rounds more of time until fatigue and when the combat ends it resets. If you continue after fatigue for half that time more you get exhausted. Of course I would make these last substantially less than the normal fatigues and exhaustions and make them last 10 minutes at most.

Something like this might work although it would need fine tuning and honestly regardless of how you do it it will just screw with balance, it's bad enough that spells are overpowered, make the only thing martials can do tire them and you make the already non-existent balance get worse, so if you are already going to do this I would reccomend doing something to spellcasters too.

[liquidformat]

I can understand wanting to simplify thing by avoiding rolls, but note that an ensuing problem would be to remove any uncertainty to the stamina rules. If the players could know exactly when their characters will fall down, that can plan in advance around that. Having a roll make sure the players can't anticipate just when their character's stamina would fail them, which it should be, as it's not a measurable thing how long will and endurance would last exactly.

I think it depends on what we are talking about, if we are talking about melee fighting I think rolls and having feat support might be intriguing to represent someone going above and beyond their standard physical limits. However, I think going with a hard number of resilience-armor for casting makes sense. Maybe you could still cast after you hit that number but you do damage to yourself by loosing resilience and/or constitution.

[Quertus]

So, insert all the usual comments here.

Casters having to spend multiple rounds to get a spell off is not engaging gameplay.

Making martial worse in the process likely won't win you many friends.

Wizards are much more SAD than Fighters, and can afford higher Con (in point buy).

Changes to casters need to evaluate which strategies they encourage, and which they punish. This change makes out of combat casting stronger, and in combat casting weaker. This favors persistomancy and minionmancy, while hurting direct damage, bfc, and, too a lesser extent, buffing. Conventional wisdom says that this is the opposite of what most people would like to see.

So, do you really want weaker materials complaining that Wizards last longer than them in fights, while Wizards complain that they get to do a lot of nothing?

[BowStreetRunner]

Also worth noting, in many established rules regarding growing tired (hustling, forced marches, swimming over an hour, etc), characters first start taking non-lethal damage (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/injuryandDeath.htm#nonlethalDamage). When they take non-lethal damage they become fatigued (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#fatigued). Since doing something that normally causes you to become fatigued leads to exhaustion, continuing to take non-lethal damage from the activity causes them to become exhuasted (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#exhausted). So any mechanic you introduce that follows a different course is going to add to the confusion.

[Climowitz]

This shouldn't have any effect on combat, but outside of it. I have come with terms with using 4 Times Base Constitution (Resistance) Minutes per day.
That much time a person can do significant effort, which fighting is. After that, rules of fatigue and exhaustion will apply.

This will help to reduce the amount of time a caster can stay casting and casting out of combat.

I'm not sure yet, but i think i will use, Base Constitution to the amount of consecutive rounds of significant effort, in combat. That way long fights will have the phisical pc withstand more time in continued fighting, and not needing to catch breath for a few seconds.

I'm not looking to buff or nerf classes, rather to have a more strategic approach on fights, and not just, attack spell attack spell, attack spell, etc. Until one is death.

Does this looks excesive for you as players, or as DMs?

[Mordaedil]

There is a variant rule called vitalizing (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm#spellPointVariantVitalizing), which does pretty much what you want. If you want to make the fighter more balanced, give them advancement as a warblade and apply a similar mechanic to the maneuvers. Though it becomes a bit weird considering they can recover maneuvers too, essentially for free. You could have maneuvers also possess a stamina pool that gets drained similarly and once it is completely drained they cannot recover maneuvers anymore.

You know, if that helps.